Bread poem - Geir Gulliksen this time

(AN ESSAY ON BREAD)

There is bread, and there is not. Where we live

there are many types of bread: we eat it every morning

The grain was bought where it cost least. The dough was baked

where it cost least. The bread was packaged where it cost least

and driven into the country by the one worst paid.

There is bread, and there is not

The bread that is was baked at night while we slept

just by the house we sleep in, or a fortnight earlier

in some other country. It’s not certain we can taste the difference

The dough is pale and wakens to life in a man’s hands

Grandad was a baker, he got up early and lay down to sleep

in the dough when the dough was ready. He said: the hole in the slice

of bread comes from me. There were six of us grandchildren, sons of sons,

all of us thought grandad’s body made a hollow as small as a pea

as if the world was a slice of bread seen from a great height